A Senate panel on Tuesday approved legislation to give millions of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, setting up a spirited debate next month in the full Senate over the biggest changes in immigration policy in a generation.

President Barack Obama, who has made enactment of an immigration bill one of his top priorities for this year, praised the Senate Judiciary Committee’s action, saying the bill was consistent with the goals he has expressed.

Hmmm….really?

By a vote of 13-5, the Senate panel approved the bill that would put 11 million illegal residents on a 13-year path to citizenship while further strengthening security along the southwestern border with Mexico, long a sieve for illegal crossings into the United States.

The vote followed the committee’s decision to embrace a Republican move to ease restrictions on high-tech U.S. companies that want to hire more skilled workers from countries like India and China.

In a dramatic move before the vote, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, withdrew an amendment to give people the right to sponsor same-sex partners who are foreigners for permanent legal status.

Leahy’s colleagues on the committee – Republicans and Democrats – warned that the amendment would kill the legislation in Congress. Democrats generally favor providing equal treatment for heterosexual and homosexual couples, while many Republicans oppose doing so.

Well, like I said at the beginning of the post, I wasn’t going to comment much….but yeah, I will say Obama is getting what he wants. Definitely.

Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had to make what the New York senator called an “excruciating” decision on Tuesday to come out against including LGBT couple provisions in their immigration reform bill, citing the need to keep the fragile balance in the “gang of eight.”

Sounding disappointed, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) withdrew the amendment after debate during a markup on the bill.

“I take the Republican sponsors of this important legislation at their word that they will abandon their own efforts if discrimination is removed from our immigration system,” Leahy said. “So, with a heavy heart, and as a result of my conclusion that Republicans will kill this vital legislation if this anti-discrimination amendment is added, I will withhold calling for a vote on it. But I will continue to fight for equality.”

Leahy brought up his amendments on same-sex couples during a markup of the immigration bill after some uncertainty that he would force discussion on it at all. Under current law and the Defense of Marriage Act, same-sex couples cannot petition for legal status for the foreign-born partner, even if they’re legally married in their state. That means that thousands are forced to live separately for months or years, or even leave the United States to be with their partners.

Even with all the steps forward lately, in the form of so many states passing marriage equality laws…this immigration bill puts LGBT rights several steps backwards…again.

Just hours after hundreds of people held a rally in Greenwich Village to protest the killing of a gay man last week, two men were violently assaulted in separate attacks in downtown Manhattan because of their sexual orientation, New York City officials said on Tuesday.

The attacks added to a troubling increase in reported antigay crimes in the city.

“It is a shame that we have to get together to talk about some things that should never occur, that we always thought, you know, we’d gotten beyond that,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said.

The company’s method of holding profits overseas isn’t new — and it’s not necessarily illegal — but it was the focus of a Senate hearing on Tuesday in which Apple CEO Tim Cook defended the company’s tax strategies, which allowed Apple to pay a 2 percent tax on $74 billion in profits.

Apple of course isn’t the only company doing this. The tech giant, along with some of America’s largest companies, held at least $1.9 trillion in assets abroad, according to Bloomberg. General Electric, which held $108 billion overseas in 2012, topped Bloomberg’s list of U.S. companies with the most cash held offshore.

Apple has called for US corporate tax rates to be slashed after it admitted sheltering at least $30bn (£20bn) of international profits in Irish subsidiaries that pay no tax at all.

In a dramatic display of how threats from multinational corporations are driving down taxes across the world, chief executive Tim Cook warned Congress that he would refuse to repatriate a total of $100bn stashed offshore unless it acted to slash the 35% US rate.

Cook said the tax rate for repatriated money should be set “in single digits” to persuade companies to bring it back. Standard tax for US profits should be, he said, in the “mid 20s”.

He also revealed that Apple had struck a secret deal with the Irish government in 1980 to limit its domestic taxes there to 2%.

Three subsidiaries based in Ireland are also used to shelter profits made in the rest of Europe and Asia but are not classed as resident in any country for tax purposes – a tactic dubbed the “iCompany” by critics.

Cook’s testimony to a Senate sub-committee investigating multinational tax practices largely confirmed its findings that Apple had taken tax avoidance to a new extreme by structuring these companies so they did not incur tax liabilities anywhere.

NASA can send robots to Mars, no problem. But if it’s ever going to put humans on the red planet it has to figure out how to feed them over the course of a years-long mission.So the space agency has funded research for what could be the ultimate nerd solution: a 3-D printer that creates entrees or desserts at the touch of a button.

But Contractor, a mechanical engineer with a background in 3D printing, envisions a much more mundane—and ultimately more important—use for the technology. He sees a day when every kitchen has a 3D printer, and the earth’s 12 billion people feed themselves customized, nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a time, from cartridges of powder and oils they buy at the corner grocery store. Contractor’s vision would mean the end of food waste, because the powder his system will use is shelf-stable for up to 30 years, so that each cartridge, whether it contains sugars, complex carbohydrates, protein or some other basic building block, would be fully exhausted before being returned to the store.

Ubiquitous food synthesizers would also create new ways of producing the basic calories on which we all rely. Since a powder is a powder, the inputs could be anything that contain the right organic molecules. We already know that eating meat is environmentally unsustainable, so why not get all our protein from insects?

If eating something spat out by the same kind of 3D printers that are currently being used to make everything from jet engine parts to fine art doesn’t sound too appetizing, that’s only because you can currently afford the good stuff, says Contractor. That might not be the case once the world’s population reaches its peak size, probably sometime near the end of this century.

“I think, and many economists think, that current food systems can’t supply 12 billion people sufficiently,” says Contractor. “So we eventually have to change our perception of what we see as food.”

I’ve spent all day reading about it, pretty much. It appears it’s all connected to a massive drug bust in Watertown in May 2011. Then the triple murder in Waltham. Convenient for the FBI that the two accused men are both dead though.

I adopted two special needs kitties 5 years ago (cerebellar hypoplasia)so they have motor skills probems. After the first few months I took them outdoors for the first (supervised) time. I will never forget how they reacted to seeing that great big blue sky. They just trembled with excitement and the little boy started galloping in place. I call that his happy dance now….it was so awesome.

That is just so sweet! I saw a video this morning of an elephant painting a self portrait. A young elephant, but not a baby like the one in your link. The video has been up for a few years, but this was the first I’d seen it.

Went back to the surgeon today & he cut off more skin near the wound. It’s hurting really, really bad & the pain meds aren’t working. Anyway I had to watch this again & it worked better than any pain meds. Apparently this was filmed in Phuket, Thailand.

I see the infectious disease doctor (office next to the hospital) at 9 tomorrow morning. I really, really don’t want to go back into the hospital, so I hope he doesn’t send me back. I’m a slow healer – diabetes + die hard smoker. Plus I’m just plain bull-headed, always have been. Pain has been a daily part of my life for the past 30 years, so I’m sure I’ll get over this pain by tomorrow. You, better than most, should understand that life goes on and things gotta get done so you work around your “problems” & keep going. I managed to get in about 6 hours of “work from home” stuff today that had to be done. I’m going to lie down & get some “purr”therapy for a bit. That should cure what ails me.

Curtis McCarty, a member of the Oklahoma Uniform Building Code Commission and a builder himself, said the twister on Monday would have defeated attempts to resist it above ground. “You cannot build a structure that’s going to take a direct hit from a tornado like that that’s going to stand,” he said.
…
Mike Gilles, a former president of the Oklahoma State Home Builders Association, said that he built safe rooms in all his custom homes, and that even many builders who build speculatively now make them standard.

But asked whether the government should require safe rooms in homes, he said, “Most homebuilders would be against that because we think the market ought to drive what people are putting in the houses, not the government.”

BB, you were right yesterday about the no regulation culture. If building codes don’t come from “the government”, do they fall from the sky on marble tablets? Dumbasses!

Yep, I don’t know why they just don’t build the entire school underground. Sure, it would cost more up front, and they would have to drill through hardpan. They would save quickly though, on reduced heating and cooling. No rebuilding either.

I’m really perplexed by this and the Boston Bomber related developments. I mean–I don’t want to be over alarmist, I’ll be over it soon enough. but these terror moments–domestic and foreign– are getting closer and closer for us in the “western world”…not to mention weirder and weirder. Creepier and creepier. And never quite fully/satisfactorily covered by our Ditzy media. If it weren’t for BB’s (and Jj’s and Kat’s) excellent posts and coverage, I’d be completely lost

Almost like we are inching ever so much closer to living with drone attacks as our best friends someday. Ugh. If big brother is really watching, the incompetence then is really stunning. Breaking our privacy for…absolutely nothing.

While they’re off making hay on the “scandal-plagued” White House, the congressional Republicans are wrongfooting themselves on the economy, and things are getting just a trifle ugly. Undaunted by the wrath of the King Of All Green Rooms, Tailgunner Ted Cruz of Texas has replied by making things quite plain.

The Florida man questioned by authorities for his connection to suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev allegedly confessed to being involved with a 2011 triple murder before being fatally shot Tuesday by an FBI agent, NBC News reported.

Except there aren’t any tapes to prove he actually “confessed,” and now it turns out he didn’t even have a knife when he lunged at agent. There were at least four LE officers in the room–probably more and they couldn’t subdue him? Now they’re saying he was holding something in his hand but it wasn’t a knife.

Re: the 3D printing thing. I think i read something about printing graphene the other day? But printing food? Say what? Now I know I was correct when i ignored my high school teacher who told me I should major in physics.. I could only do the problems on paper, not envision this stuff. Crazy new frontier we’re ending. i’d love an explanation too. Gonna read more or skim through more comments here to find out what this is all about. Utopia? Dystopia? Soylent WTF?

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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.

You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.